Cathy Twiston-Davies and her moment of madness on the M25

When Same Difference ranged alongside Quentin Collonges at the last fence in
Saturday’s bet365 Gold Cup, he realised the grey horse beside him does a
passable impression of knackered when it clearly is not.

End of a long day: Same Difference (right) and Quentin Collonges jumpt the final fence at Sandown Photo: PA

Same Difference might then also have worked out that his rival had 9lb less lead in his weight cloth and could have been forgiven for thinking it just was not his day.

Earlier he had been stuck on the M25 after the lorry taking him, The New One – part of Sandown’s parade of Champions – Cathy Twiston-Davies and the horses’ lads to Sandown had a tyre blow out.

Calmly, for they were parked up on the hard shoulder at a junction of the M25, which is tagliatelle to the M5’s spaghetti, Cathy called the AA to alert them to their predicament. From a call centre somewhere they advised her to go to the verge and sit there until help arrived.

Naturally she did not want to leave two of the stable’s rising stars and her decision was reinforced by the fact that to get to the nearest verge she, in a skirt, and her two cohorts would have had to cross a fast slip road, scale a five-foot concrete barrier and then take a punt on crossing the carriageway.

Following along not far behind in his car was the trainer, Nige, who is neither patient enough to wait for help nor, as a practical farmer, the type to let his best pinstripe suit or a steady stream of passing traffic get in the way of changing a lorry wheel.

The spare was eventually dug out and rolled through the lorry between the legs of The New One and Same Difference. Then the Naunton trainer – evidence afterwards suggested he did not remove his suit jacket – lay on his back under his lorry while his feet poked out into the 'slow’ – a relative term on Saturday morning – lane of the M25.

Mrs T-D, resplendent in her smartest blue racing coat, decided that even an ex-husband with run-over feet would be no good to anyone so, not unlike Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children, advanced to the edge of the slow lane waving a red flag, which was actually someone’s anorak, on a stick warning drivers that there was not just danger, but an audition for the Williams Formula One pit team taking place in the road ahead.

At that point she received a telephone call from a distraught traffic officer, who had been given her number by the AA, asking if

she might be the mad woman in

a blue coat waving a red flag in

the motorway?

“Yes,” she replied, “and my name is Cathy.”

“Well I suggest,” he responded, “you and your friends get off the motorway before you’re all arrested.”

The consequences were that the police did arrive – to cordon off the inside lane rather than make arrests. At the same time a passing tyre truck stopped. Serendipitous moments

on the M25 are few and far between but that was one of them. Not, alas, in time for The New One to make

his parade.

RACECOURSE PATROL

The 'experience’ of a day’s racing is what the marketing men would have us believe it is all about. In Ayr’s case, by all accounts, that experience would be ruined by seagulls were it not for a falconer and his Harris hawk, who patrol the top of the stands on race days.

Out of respect for the bird of prey, the seagulls keep their distance and might even actually go fishing when racing is on now. Without the bird of prey they would spend the day dive bombing the crowd to steal food.

A similar, though not identical, ploy has been used at Musselburgh where they have stuck a plastic eagle owl up in a prominent position. Seagulls are not stupid by all accounts. Not only do they perch on the eagle owl’s head, on departure each gull is inclined to leave its calling card on the plastic bird.

WATCHING BRIEF

This is a public service announcement: racing fans dragged along to Badminton Horse Trials this weekend will be pleased to know that The Outside Chance, the bar/nightclub with a terrace overlooking the lake where the Princess Royal was once baptised, will be showing both the 2,000 and 1,000 Guineas live on a big screen.